It took Ebbrecht five hours to reach Exit 63 on the LIE. It took a few more hours to dig out of the service road there. Around 1 a.m. he got onto Middle Country Road. There he got stuck again, this time for good.

Sometimes he and about nine other motorists tried to dig themselves out; sometimes he huddled in his Toyota Camry, drinking Vitamin Water and listening to the radio.

"We didn't see any plows out there," he said. "We were wondering, did they forget about us out here?"

Ebbrecht was one of the lucky ones, stuck about two miles from his home. Around dawn he left his car and walked home.

"I feel bad because there are still some people out there," he said by phone from home Saturday. "There was a diabetic woman and her husband stuck in their car. He walked back four or five miles to their house to get insulin."